Kids Saving the Rainforest wants to invite the whole Quepos Community to come, participate, and support the First Ever Wildlife Rescue, Rehabilitation, and Release Conference in Costa Rica.

It will take place from August 7 through the 11th, with participation of around 200 people from all over the country. We will have fieldtrips, presentations, posters, and workshops. To be a sponsor and support this exceptional event please write to congresorescate@gmail.com, your help from $50 to $5000 will indeed help save the lives of many wild animals and help to release them back into the wild.

We would like to take this time to formally thank all of you who helped Kids Saving the Rainforest raise money for our Wildlife Rescue Center. The event was amazing and we are very grateful to say that we raised more than $4,500! This will help us to sustain our efforts at the center for a limited period of time and ensure continued maintenance to rescue, rehabilitate and release wildlife in our zone!

Kinkajous (Potos flavus) and in Spanish “Martillas”, are medium size mammals (40-55cms long, weighing 2-3kg), brownish colored from the Procyonid family. This means they are nocturnal, live in pairs or by themselves and are arboreal and terrestrial; just like raccoons (Procyon lotor) and coatis (Nasua narica). However, they have unique characteristics that make them very special in the rainforest. For example: although they are categorized as carnivores, they do not eat meat. Their diet is basically fruits, flowers, and rarely they will eat a bird’s egg or an insect. They have a 5 inch tongue that helps them get nectar from flowers making them pollinators. Their ankles and wrists can rotate more than most mammals helping them climb up and down trees and walk in branches easily. They also have a long prehensile tail that can wrap itself around a branch and hold on to most of the animal’s weight so it can hang and reach for a fruit in a lower branch.

White face monkeys are very intelligent new world monkeys. They are omnivores who eat fruits, veggies, insects, eggs, lizards and almost anything that moves. In the wild they are always in the canopy and travel during the morning and afternoon in troops of 7 or more individuals. They are very active, curious, and playful all the time. Their big eyes, pink nose, stand up position and fingers make them very similar to people. Many humans get confused and think that this cute animal will become fabulous and funny pets. However they can’t be more wrong.

Have you ever wondered what Kids Saving the Rainforest does? Well, now is your chance to find out:

• We have a MINAET licensed Wildlife Rescue Center in the heart of ManuelAntonio with over 4 acres of land, 11 cages, and housing for our vet and rehabber. Last year KSTR rescued and rehabilitated 116 animals and released 50% of them. The average in other center worldwide is 33% so we are very pleased with the success rate.

The Wildlife Rescue Center was very busy in 2010 and it was also very successful. We received 116 injured, sick, or orphaned animals, which is 37 more than we received in 2009. Most of them were titi monkeys and both species of sloths, the 3 toed and the 2 toed. However we also treated porcupines, kinkajous, white face monkeys, howler monkeys, ocelots (a wild cat also know as the Dwarf Leopard), and even one otter, among others! Our success rate is increasing year after year, right now with a remarkable statistic of over 50% release percentage. We feel very enthusiastic by this number considering that other wildlife rescue centers barely release up to third of the animals accepted.

Titi monkeys (saimiri oerstedii citrinellus) are small but very intelligent and dexterous. They are unique to the Manuel Antonio area.

Last august, some kids were visiting Playa El Rey in the National Park and found a very young monkey on the ground, he was hurt and couldn’t move. They felt sorry for the little guy and carefully picked him up and put him in a box. They took him to MINAET not knowing what else to do. MINAET brought him to us. The little titi was about 6 months old and had a very serious fracture in his arm and another in his clavicle. He could have fallen from a very tall tree just when he was learning to move on his own.

These kids saved his life; he would have been eaten by a predator or would have died alone of hunger.

Costa Rican national authorities along with the United States signed a symbiotic alliance in January to create the Energy Efficient Center (Centro de Energía Eficiente).

This center will promote research, development, and use of cleaner and more efficient energy that will allow this country to reach its objective of becoming carbon neutral by the year 2021. In other words, Costa Rica wants to mitigate the carbon that is created here.

“This is just the beginning. A committee of eight people will have to identify priorities and the best method to operate”, Gloria Villa, of the Energy Department at MINAET said. She is also very enthusiastic as it is an alliance with the University of Costa Rica (UCR), Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) and Refinadora Costarricense de Petróleo (RECOPE).

The building to house the project will be located at the University of Costa Rica and the Dean of the University, Yamileth González, stated that this institution will reinforce research on more efficient energy but above all, it will teach the community what is learned.

“This center will also train professionals on efficient energy and clean technologies. Their experiences will help other countries in the region,” said Peter Brennan, in charge of business at the US embassy.

This idea was born last year in Trinidad & Tobago during the Cumbre de las Américas, when US president, Barack Obama, proposed the initiative. Then the regional countries applied with their own projects. “Costa Rica was chosen due to its leadership in environmental issues,” Brennan stated.

The US Department of Energy donated $100,000 as part of a Low Carbon Community Initiative in the Americas, the Presidential House said.

This is great news for Costa Rica, Kids Saving The Rainforest, and the environmental community!

The sloths are part of the Xenartha order which also includes anteaters and armadillos. This bizarre order is only found in Central and South America. They are different from all other animals in that they have an unusual lower back vertebrae and two vena cava (returns blood to the heart, the other mammals have only one).

Evolution

They are some of the most ancient mammals and have been on Earth for more than 60 million years ago. For example, they are so primitive that their reproductive and digestive tract open into a single chamber called cloaca, like birds and reptiles.